


Ghost Made Flesh

by greerwatson



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Backstory, M/M, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 19:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3780919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/pseuds/greerwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave talks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Made Flesh

**Author's Note:**

  * For [havisham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/gifts).



> Written to the prompt, "Dave. I'm mostly interested in Dave because of his relationship with Andrew, but if you're dying to write about Dave's doomed love for Bertie Raynes, than please do! I do love WWI tragedies."

_“This really is none of your business.”_

_“Except that I’m your friend. And his. And … I want to help.”_

_“But this has nothing to do with_ him _, I assure you. He has his own problems right now; and I would never trouble him … not in any way, ever. Right now, he needs me to be the Rock of Gibraltar.”_

_“Well, from your letter … and his … and what I read between the lines, I get the distinct impression there are cracks in the Rock.”_

_“I’ll manage, thank you, Derek. You really needn’t have wangled leave and come to town.”_

_“There’s a lot I obviously don’t know. Oh, that you were a friend of his parents. And something of his background. However, a bit here … a bit there …it doesn’t really join the dots, does it? I could ask you questions; but I don’t really know what to ask. For_ you _to tell_ me _, I suppose.”_

_“Quite unnecessary.”_

_“For_ his _sake. Before he reads between the lines himself. After all, if_ I _have seen that something is wrong, how long do you think it will be before_ he _does? He is clearly not just worried about Laurie.”_

_“You know about Laurie?”_

_“Oh, I think the whole hospital knows about Laurie! But I’ve been putting two and two together.”_

_“Perhaps.”_

_“So … why don’t you ‘begin at the beginning’, wherever that may be?”_

*

For a moment, at the door, he looked just like his father. I may have paused a bit too long; but it didn’t matter because behind me Cynthia said, “Who is it, darling?”, invited him in and made tea. He still called me Uncle Dave. That was just after the end of his final term, but before he got his call-up papers.

At that time, I hadn’t seen him for years. Not really since he was a child, though there’d been letters. It was—

I think I’d better go back a bit. (‘Begin at the beginning’, indeed!)

I didn’t get in touch with Catherine after my return to England. She was newly widowed: Bertie never saw his son, you know; he died in Austria a few months before Andrew was born. However, I met Cynthia a year or two later: she was the saving of me in so many ways: we had a good marriage: I loved her dearly, and … I miss her, you know. I should not have gone away; I should have been here … in London, at our house. Even if it meant I was there when the bomb hit. These last few months, she has only had letters and loneliness; and it need not have been so.

Well, we did not live far away from the flat, attended the same meetings: inevitably we all met. Catherine remembered me as Bertie’s friend. Cynthia had heard a little of him from me: of course, she felt bound to invite Catherine round for tea. Then one thing led to another; you know how it is. Within months, Cynthia was popping round regularly; we looked after Andrew when Catherine was ill. I _knew_ the boy, do you see? Knew him from infancy. Though it was Cynthia who took it harder when Catherine died and Bertie’s family swooped in to take Andrew back to their bosom. In some ways, I think he was—not a son to her, of course (for our own child died, and you can’t simply substitute); but she had been ‘Auntie Sinnsia’, in that little baby lisp he had for a few years. Courtesy relations, of course; but still … Uncle Dave and Auntie Cynthia. It was bitter when her loving letters came back ‘Addressee Unknown’.

A couple of years later, Andrew wrote out of the blue. It was a desperate appeal; and I went immediately. Cynthia chose not to go; and, in the event, I was glad of it, given the discourtesy with which I was met. (Not that I was surprised, given all that Bertie had hinted about his background. You’ve heard what little Andrew has said of his uncle and aunt: this won’t surprise you, either.) I was shown the door so fast that I scarcely saw Andrew: just a glimpse in the hall as he came rushing downstairs; the door, blocked by his uncle, already closing in my face. He was taller than I remembered, but still very much a young lad.

And then he came back into our lives, one summer afternoon with war pending, suddenly arrived at our door almost a man grown. Our occasional contact through letters from school had not hinted at this maturity. (Perhaps we had not been reading between the lines.) It was easy to say to _this_ Andrew, “No, no, call me Dave.” I did not feel like his uncle.

So few years at our age: such a difference at his.

I had last seen Andrew a sullen urgent boy. Now, he looked so much like Bertie, it was uncanny. A ghost made flesh. I hunted for Catherine in him, and tried to focus on trivial distinctions; but the nose … the lips … the chin. So familiar. So _damnably _dear in memory: my old friend, long dead.__

*

_“Ah, so that’s it.”_

_“Is it? What you must think!”_

_“Well, I’ve never heard you speak before of … ‘Bertie’. Andrew has, certainly: not by name, of course; but he talks occasionally about his father whom he never met. More about his mother; his grandmother, sometimes; even his uncle and aunt, who—or so it seems to me—must have found him as trying as he found them impossible. (There is never only_ one _side to a story.) But, although he always said that you knew his family, you never spoke about them yourself … so long in the past, one might suppose.”_

_“Lifetimes ago.”_

_“Certainly, you never spoke of ‘Bertie’.”_

_“I never spoke to_ anyone _of him, beyond the simple facts.”_

_“Not even to your wife?”_

_“Certainly not! He was dead of typhus before we even met, and a father-to-be at the time he died. In any case, I rarely spoke to Cynthia about the war. So few understand, you know, unless they were over there; and we met in London, later. And so the deeper silence rolled into the greater.”_

_“Untold secrets.”_

_“Oh, I_ never _spoke to Bertie of my feelings! Never. It was a private struggle and a hard one; and I am proud to say that I won.”_

_“And then Andrew came back into your life.”_

 *

He turned up at our door, Bertie and Catherine’s son (and so like both of them!). Cynthia invited him to stay with us: for my old friendship with his father; for the memory of his mother; for his own sake, through the correspondence of his past years at school; and because he was a young Friend in crisis. He attended meetings for the first time in years, and slipped back into the old habit of his childhood with a joy and certainty that spoke volumes. Our house was more a home to him than his aunt and uncle’s had ever been. Then they forwarded his call-up papers; and he felt compelled to go home and face the music. (Those were _his_ words. Such a telling phrase!) Of course, I’d only met them the once. I’ve never been quite sure whether they were angrier that I was a Friend or that I was a friend; or even that Andrew had known where to write me, which I suppose was in an old address book of Catherine’s. At any rate, they were emphatic that he was their business and not mine; and, from a legal perspective, there could be no doubt of it. The ethics of the situation clearly didn’t matter; I’d had no choice but to leave. It did mean, though, that I had a fair idea how they would take his application for exemption as a c.o.

You see, we had no doubt what he intended to say to them. That _he_ had doubts was a surprise; but, of course, as his family, they had had years in which to influence him. So he took his doubts to the hills, to commune with the only person whose counsel truly matters. And then he told them his decision (and was no doubt shown the door in his turn, though he’s never told us the details).

I can see that you might have questions about my rejoining the Friends Ambulance Service. Truly, I was not thinking of Andrew—or rather, not _specifically_ of Andrew, but of all the conscientious objectors like him. It is sadly true that, when one is dealing with uniformed authority, one receives a significantly different response when they talk, not to a young man who, by their lights, should be in one of the armed services, but to a man who, simply by virtue of his age, is obviously a volunteer. Or, to put it another way, everyone takes me to be ‘in charge’. At any rate, Cynthia felt strongly that I was needed and supported my decision … if it were not _her_ decision first, which is equally likely.

So I found myself sharing a hut with _you_ —well, not only you personally, of course; nor Andrew, for that matter; but a group of young men very much like those with whom I had worked in the last war. And you can say for yourself if this is true; but it seemed to me that you have all halfway looked up to me (as if I were in charge!); but also halfway treated me as one of yourselves, despite the difference in age.

 *

 _“Yes, I think there’s a lot of truth in that. It helped that you didn’t_ act _in charge, but always did the same work, right alongside us. First among equals, you might say. Certainly that seems to be the reaction of people like Major Ferguson and Matron.”_

_“Thank you.”_

_“It was quite deliberate on your part: I could see that.”_

 *

The trouble is … there were times when cameraderie led me astray. (Well, _I_ would say ‘astray’.) Almost a double vision. _Déjà vu_ , even.

You know how often we would listen to Laurie’s gramophone. (Did he take it with him to the hospital in Bridstow; or did he leave it with you?) Anyway, I’m not thinking so much of that occasion when the nurses came and there was dancing. I’m thinking of the odd hours when we orderlies were simply passing the time. Sitting out on the grass, in the good weather; or later, when it got colder, in the hut. I’d be on my bed—by default of chairs—with Andrew curled up over by the gramophone changing records. You know where we usually put the machine: he was only feet away; and I could almost have reached out to touch him. _Could_ have, if I’d stretched a bit. It took me back … to another hut, in another war, and a group of men who were truly my peers. (Oh, yes, we had a portable gramophone in the Great War. Not mine; but I took my turn winding it when its owner was on duty.)

There were many times when I almost reached out to Bertie. When the light was dim and we were talking … of all the things that people do talk about during war: life and truth and God. (While the world goes to hell in a handbasket, and the devil tempts you.) You get very close to people when death is near—and, even after the war during the Occupation, death was appallingly close.

I wanted to reach out and touch his shoulder, stroke his hair, run a hand over his cheek….

I rejoiced and despaired.

*

_“Sorry. I’m embarrassing you.”_

_“Not … quite. I appreciate the honesty. And, you know, these feelings are true. No matter how much you may feel the emotion misplaced, this_ is _a sort of love that you talk about.”_

_“Not to my mind. Certainly not a love to act on.”_

_“That’s not the point. You loved Bertie; I have no doubt of that. From your perspective, perhaps you loved him_ too _much to act on it.”_

_“It’s an infernal muddle, is what it is.”_

_“Yes, I can see that. In fact, I was wondering when you were speaking just then....”_

_“What?”_

_“No, no. Go on.”_

_“Well, there’s not much more to say, is there?”_

_“Andrew and Laurie? You felt strongly about their friendship, didn’t you? I saw your face once or twice … when Andrew followed him into the woods, particularly. Not so much when they met at night. (Too many people around, I suppose.)”_

 *

It takes a while for one to pick apart the names and faces from the mass; but there are always a few whom you notice even the first day. Laurie simply didn’t fit: his accent stood out as soon as he spoke to me. I’m not surprised that Andrew took to him. He’s a friendly sort, likes everyone. And it was not hard to see why Laurie stuck to Andrew, given that there were few others around who shared his background and interests. I suppose, looking at it logically, he could have made friends with several among us: it just happened to be Andrew.

Well, that was what I thought at first.

All too soon, though, Andrew spoke of Laurie in terms that made it all too clear that he meant a great deal to him—far more than any casual, pleasant acquaintance. And I caught the tail end of a look or two from Laurie. It was the sort of thing that someone less attuned to such glances might not even notice. (In fact, I was reasonably certain that Andrew didn’t grasp their import.) Still, it did not take _me_ long—with my special knowledge of such situations—to see that there were feelings on both sides that might be better suppressed.

I debated long and hard; I prayed for guidance; I remained unsure. You see, there was nothing to indicate that either of them was aware of their feelings. I did not want to say anything, to either of them, that might make matters worse. What they did not _know_ they felt, they would not act on.

I felt like the serpent in Eden. Except, of course, that I already had the knowledge of good and evil, and could choose _not_ to dangle temptation … to those who might not yet know its lure.

 *

_“Poetic.”_

_“Not really.”_

_“Well, I meant the way you were putting it. It’s not a romantic situation, of course. Not from_ your _perspective, anyway—though I suppose it might be from theirs.”_

 *

I had to come up to London because of Cynthia, of course; but I stayed because I saw the need. Then Andrew followed. He had his reasons. I don’t want to go into them: they’re _his_ business; and, if he wants you to know, he’ll tell you himself. A crisis of conscience, in a way. It’s not _my_ place to speak of it. But Laurie comes into it, of course. (You’ve guessed that much already.)

He was up here not long ago. Took French leave from Bridstow General in the hope of seeing Andrew and having it all out with him. Well, I talked to him … for quite a while. He left a bit dissatisfied, I think, but with a better understanding of the utter _confusion_ that Andrew is feeling right now.

I think he may write. In time: not too soon, I hope. I would like Andrew to get himself sorted out properly first, so that he can read a letter from Laurie in a better frame of mind.

And yes, I did talk to Andrew—about his own feelings, and what they meant, and how best to handle himself in such a situation should it happen again. I had to explain to him something of how I knew: of my own past, when I was about his age; and the … the stage I went through for a time, during the war, before I met Cynthia. He needed to know that so that he would understand why I am in a position to advise him. Of course, I did not mention that it was his own father whom I—

No, I don’t think it would have helped him to know that.

Unsettled him, I should think.

You must understand, there is nothing like that about my feelings for Andrew. I think Laurie may have mistaken things a bit: he could see, of course, that I am fond—

Well, you all know that I care for Andrew. Cynthia and I were friends with his parents. Naturally, I have an avuncular interest in his well-being. I am concerned for his future happiness: anyone would be, in my position.

*

_“Have you thought, now that the funeral’s over and you’ve dealt with—well, whatever formalities, and bequests, and that sort of thing—have you thought of coming back to the hospital?”_

_“Oh, I don’t know. You all know the work by now; there’s a routine. People have largely come to accept you, too. I’m more useful here, I think.”_

_“It might be simpler all round, you know.”_

_“In what way?”_

_“He looks a lot like his father, you said.”_

_“Oh, nonsense. When I look at him, I see Catherine! One could almost say he’s the spitting image of her. I don’t see Bertie in him at all.”_


End file.
